GB at The White Hotel

It takes dedication to find poetry in The Metro. In 2025, while briefly living in London, Copenhagen-based artist GB Gustav Berntsen turned to the impossibly enduring freesheet as the lyrical foundation of his new record, Herzsprung, applying the cut-up technique pioneered by poet Tristan Tzara and implemented by everyone from Bowie to David Byrne and Thom Yorke.

London wears off on the record in other ways, too. Where GB’s debut record was shrouded in a downtempo haze, Herzsprung pushed towards something more melodic and full-throated, while drawing on the angular, mathy experimentalism of bands from Brixton’s Windmill scene. There are also traces of the alt-pop qualities GB shares with his Copenhagen peers, and echoes of everything from 1970s fusion jazz to Japanese noise-rock psychedelia.

And it’s all down to that weird Jaguar ad from 2024. You know, the one that rebranded a car company without showing a single car. Improbably, Berntsen found himself cast in it, and used the cash to book out a studio villa in the Swedish wilderness. Over the course of a week, the songs — which had previously existed as memos and notebook scribbles — came to life through jams and collective instinct.

A big part of the album’s energy stems from it being recorded live in the room. “Making Herzsprung was about introducing an element of risk into the recording process, recording live to tape with a four-piece band to create something more uplifting”, Berntsen says. You can hear it in the chemistry of the band, the players  brimming with ideas and welcoming spontaneity.

Berntsen’s guitar playing sits at the centre of it all, informed by his time in punk bands and why studying Free Improvisation at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory. There are shades of Manchester’s Kiran Leonard in the knotty filigrees of opening ‘Adrenaline’, while ‘The Next Day’ is all chamber poppy elegance, complete with beautiful chiming harmonics. Things get grungier on the climactic slowcore of ‘Shit River’, with Berntsen backed by a choir and some kind of metal-screamer alter-ego as he incants: “someplace beaming with more colors, and everything in between collapsed, rushing floods of insignificance”.

A record built from chance – cut-up headlines, a week of improvising – that still sounds this controlled is the real trick of Herzsprung. Hear it live at The White Hotel alongside the alongside the wistful work of Organ Tapes, the English-Chinese, London-based musician whose new EP 一包烟 (‘a pack of cigarettes’) continues the downcast, guitar-first city-folk he began on 2022’s 唱着那无人问津的歌谣.